An Interview with Kotaro Suzumura

WalterBossertDepartment of Economics, University of Montreal

and

Marc FleurbaeyWoodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

This version: June 30, 2014

The interview was conducted on October 4, 2007, during a Workshop associated with the 2007Condorcet lectures delivered by Kotaro Suzumura on October 4 and 5, 2007 at the University of Caen.It was revised and expanded substantially on the occasion of Bossert’s visit to Waseda University, whereSuzumura taught social choice theory and public philosophy over six years after his retirement fromHitotsubashi University until the end of March 2014.

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Walter Bossert (WB) and Marc Fleurbaey (MF): We would like to know what influences attracted youto economics in general, and social choice theory and welfare economics in particular early on. Weunderstand that, as an undergraduate student, you did not have much exposure to microeconomic theoryas we think of it now, much less to social choice theory and welfare economics. How and when did youdevelop an interest in these topics?

Kotaro Suzumura (KS): My education in economics began at Hitotsubashi University in 1962, which isone of the best national universities in Japan as far as the humanities and social sciences go. It was thegood old days, and we were not trained in the way our students are trained nowadays. Many teacherstalked more about their own interests rather than teaching standard courses and following a standardcurriculum.

I still remember the first day of the class on development economics taught by a senior professor,who I later learned was a famous scholar. It was an extreme example of non-standard education in thesedays. I was then a third year undergraduate. Without giving even a word of introduction, he turnedhis back to us and began to draw a colourful picture on the blackboard, which took more than thirtyminutes. Students were puzzled and a stir ran through the classroom. When he completed his artisticwork, what appeared on the blackboard was Siddhartha Gautama sitting on a lotus calyx. He turned tous and declared that it represented the economic nirvana. Without uttering any further word, he wentout of the classroom to take a puff at a pipe. Needless to say, his theatrical performance took me bysurprise. I could have enjoyed it if I had not been pressed by the strong innate desire to pursue my owninterest in the performance characteristics of democratic methods of decision-making. I was aware thatI could not do so without rigorous discipline if I were to aspire for a sensible academic career. Thus, Idecided to spend more time in libraries than in classrooms if I found that the class was unlikely to serveto this end. As a consequence, I became more a self-trained scholar through books of my own choicerather than a well-trained scholar. Needless to say, there were several excellent classes, which helped megreatly in my search for scholarly endeavours. I was also fortunate enough to encounter a few excellentbooks on microeconomics and related disciplines in the library, which I found intellectually fascinating.I recollect that these books included Takashi Negishi’s monograph on Price and Allocation Theory,Hukukane Nikaido’s textbook on Mathematical Methods of Modern Economics and, above anything else,Kenneth Arrow’s monumental treatise on Social Choice and Individual Values.1,2 These books became

1Negishi’s book later formed the core of his classic, Negishi (1972), whereas Nikaido’s book was subsequently translatedby Kazuo Sato into Nikaido (1970). Needless to say, Arrow’s treatise is one of the greatest classics in the theory of socialchoice.

2Hukukane Nikaido (1923-2001) used to be a colleague of Michio Morishima (1923-2004) at the Institute for Social andEconomic Research, Osaka University. Subsequently, he moved to the Department of Economics, Hitotsubashi University,

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my lifelong resources ever since.

WB & MF: You said you already had a strong innate desire to study the performance characteristicsof democratic methods of decision-making. How did you nourish this interest?

KS: It goes a long way back to my high school days in 1960. The Security Treaty between the UnitedStates and Japan was signed on September 8, 1951 after Japan gained full sovereignty at the end ofthe allied occupation. According to this Treaty, Japan granted the United States the territorial meansto establish a military presence in the Far East, which provided the initial basis for Japan’s securityrelationship with the United States. It was in 1959 that bilateral talks on revising the 1951 SecurityTreaty were started, and the new Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security was signed on January 19,1960 in Washington, D. C. When the treaty pact was submitted to the Japanese Diet for ratification,it triggered harsh debates over the Japan-United States security relationship. An extensive effort wasmade by the leftist opposition to prevent its passage. The crucial step was taken when the House ofRepresentatives finally approved the pact on May 20, 1960. The Socialist Party representatives boycottedthe Lower House session, and they tried to prevent the Liberal Democratic Party representatives fromentering the chamber. They were removed by the police force, which led to massive demonstrations andrioting by students, trade union activists, and some ordinary citizens. These demonstrations preventedPresident Dwight Eisenhower’s official visit to Japan and resulted in the resignation of Prime MinisterNobusuke Kishi. However, the House of Councillors failed to vote on the issue within the required thirtydays after the Lower House approval, and the Treaty pact was passed by default on June 19, 1960.

The 1960 struggle around the Japan-United States Security Treaty made a high school boy wonderabout the virtue of democratic methods of decision-making. Both sides of the struggle, viz., the LiberalDemocratic Party government and the opposition, issued stern warnings against the imminent dangerof the breakdown of democracy. Although both sides were using the same portmanteau catchword ofdemocracy, it was clear that they assigned very different meanings to the term. For an immature highschool boy, it was impossible to crystallize an operational definition of democratic methods of decision-making. However, even a naıve high school boy could understand the precarious status of Japan after theindependence in the midst of a harsh cold war confrontation between the two opposing camps. Thus, theoutcome of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security seemed to be not only a sensible, but also aninevitable choice, but the political manoeuvre used by the Liberal Democratic Party government in theirattempt to pass the pact was too hideous to be approved. This led me to think that there are two aspectsof the method of decision-making, viz., the final outcome to which it leads, and the procedure throughwhich the final outcome is brought about, which may well lead us into sharply contrasting judgementson the virtue of democracy.

Having these thoughts in mind, I decided to go on to Hitotsubashi University, where the chancesseemed high that I could study social sciences capable of shedding some academic light on my ownresearch agenda.

WB & MF: You have mentioned Arrow’s Social Choice and Individual Values as one of the books youhad studied for yourself in pursuit of your personal research agenda. How did you come across Arrow’smonumental book while you were still an undergraduate student?

KS: My first encounter with Arrow’s monograph, and his general impossibility theorem, was almostaccidental. When I was a first year undergraduate student, I was assigned to a compulsory class ofmathematics taught by a professor who was strongly committed to the leftist cause of the Maoist school.Although the heat of the 1960 Security Treaty Struggle had come to an end long before this time, heagitated us to stand against the Liberal Democratic Party government. He said that we were assuredof the credit of his class if only we could read and write an essay on Mao’s book. I decided to neglecthis class as well as his essay assignment altogether, and spend the time thereby vacated in the libraryto pursue my own agenda. As a consequence, I was deprived of a chance to study mathematics alonga standard curriculum. Thus, all the mathematics I needed in my research on welfare economics andsocial choice theory were acquired from reading mathematical books of my own choice.

When I became a third year undergraduate student, I happened to encounter in the library an articlewritten by the Maoist professor in his early days. His article was about general economic equilibriumand social choice. It was out of curiosity that I tried to skim through his article, and I found a roughdescription of Arrow’s General Impossibility Theorem. I do not remember what the professor was saying

where Suzumura was a third-year graduate student. Thus, he could belatedly but fortunately study mathematical economicsunder Nikaido’s supervision.

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about general economic equilibrium and social choice, but I was sufficiently intrigued by the roughstatement of the Arrow theorem itself. I rushed to another bookshelf, and could get hold of SocialChoice and Individual Values [Arrow (1951; 1963)].

Most of my summer in 1964 was devoted to a lonely struggle with Arrow’s classic. Although I wasunable to understand the full technical details, I was intoxicated for several weeks to follow by thevistas suddenly opened in front of me. My persistent interest in democratic methods of decision-making,coupled with my encounter with Arrow’s monograph, led me to pursue the research agenda suggestedby Social Choice and Individual Values. I was keenly aware of my lack of solid mathematical trainingand logical maturity to engage with this project in depth. However, I was confident that I would comeback to Arrow’s agenda sooner or later.

WB & MF: What about welfare economics? How did you come to be interested in the normative sideof microeconomic theory?

KS: I was aware of the brief history of welfare economics through my reading of Chapter VIII of PaulSamuelson’s Foundations of Economic Analysis [Samuelson (1947)]. It was a great reading overall, butit was occasionally too cryptic and terse for a beginner to appreciate. I also read Edward Mishan’s “ASurvey of Welfare Economics, 1939-1959” [Mishan (1960)], which was useful for the purpose of knowingwhat had been done at the frontier of welfare economics over the past 20 years. However, I found itdisappointing that Mishan had to declare as follows: “While it continues to fascinate many, welfareeconomics does not appear at any time to have wholly engaged the labours of any one economist. It is asubject which, apparently, one dabbles in for a while, leaves and, perhaps, returns to later in response toa troubled conscience — which goes some way to explain why, more than other branches of economics,it suffers from an unevenness in its development, a lack of homogeneity in its treatment and, until veryrecently, a distressing disconnectedness between its parts.”

I was fortunate enough to have had an opportunity to tackle Arthur Pigou’s classic, The Economicsof Welfare [Pigou (1920)] around this time. It was Professor Yuichi Shionoya who taught us a courseon the Economics of Planning. As a matter of fact, it was not about the Economics of Planning atall; it was a class devoted to a detailed commentary on Pigou’s classic. Seizing this opportunity, I readthe fourth edition of The Economics of Welfare in the English original. Although I found the structureof this book somewhat disorderly, I was fascinated with his Preface to the Third Edition (1928) whichgoes as follows: “The complicated analyses which economists endeavour to carry through are not meregymnastic. They are instruments for the bettering of human life. The misery and squalor that surroundus, the injurious luxury of some wealthy families, the terrible uncertainty overshadowing many familiesof the poor — these are evils too plain to be ignored. By the knowledge that our science seeks it ispossible that they may be restrained. Out of the darkness light! To search for it is the task, to find itperhaps the prize, which the ‘dismal science of Political Economy’ offers to those who face the discipline.”The founder’s declaration to this effect strongly encouraged me to pursue the path he had cultivated.However, I was also embarrassed by the deep cleavage in between Pigou’s moving passion for the cause ofwelfare economics, on the one hand, and Mishan’s derisive comments on the state of welfare economicsas of the end of the 1950s, on the other. My interest in welfare economics started from the desire to finda way to fill in this deep cleavage.

WB & MF: We understood that your interest in social choice theory and welfare economics started withyour reading of Arrow, Samuelson, Mishan, and Pigou. Are there any Japanese economists who exertedinfluence on you in this arena?

KS: Among the Japanese scholars active at the time, there were two who made seminal contributionsto our subject, viz., Ken-Ichi Inada (1925-2002) and Yasusuke Murakami (1931-1993). However, theywere teaching at different universities (Inada was affiliated with Tokyo Metropolitan University beforejoining the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, and Murakami was teachingat the University of Tokyo). It was not customary in Japan around that time to visit scholars in otheruniversities to ask for guidance and instruction. I found their papers in Econometrica and struggled tounderstand them. Again, my self-education was quite sporadic and accidental. It was much later that Ihad personal contact with Inada and Murakami, but they had already lost their research interest in oursubject and washed their hands of the business.

After I became aware of the research field of social choice theory through Arrow’s classic, the nextstage of my self-education in this arena was predominantly through Amartya Sen’s wonderful book,Collective Choice and Social Welfare [Sen (1970a)]. His book was not only readable due to his excellentskill of exposition, but also deeply insightful and rich in economic and philosophical contents. As a matter

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of fact, I had the great fortune to hear his presentation at the Far Eastern Meeting of the EconometricSociety, which was held in 1968.3 The site of the Far Eastern Meeting in the 1960s was always in Tokyo,and Sen’s fascinating presentation was on an early version of his justly famous Impossibility of a ParetianLiberal [Sen (1970)]. Inada was the pre-assigned discussant.

WB & MF: You more or less suggested that your interest in welfare economics and social choice theorywas almost accidental, but maybe you already had some orientation towards that kind of issue ratherthan other issues in economics. Would you give us an idea of the intellectual curiosity, which pushedyou towards this direction? Could it be your family background or any other kind of general culturalbackground?

KS: There are two background reasons for my interest in welfare economics and social choice theory.One of the reasons is straightforwardly connected with the contrast between the two rival economicregimes, viz., the capitalist regime and the socialist regime, whereas the other reason is deeply rooted inthe traditional social and economic norms and conventions in Japan, which were starkly constraining useven in the postwar period at least up until the mid-1960s. Let me briefly explain these two reasons oneby one.

As I have already explained, Japan regained full sovereignty at the end of the allied occupation. It wasin the midst of the harsh cold war confrontation between the opposing regimes. The 1960 Security TreatyStruggle could be understood only by taking the cold war confrontation into consideration. During myfirst year undergraduate days, I became aware that there was a serious controversy in the 1930s on therational workability of the socialist regime vis-a-vis the capitalist regime, viz., the Economic PlanningControversy. The functioning of the capitalist regime, which once seemed to lead the free marketeconomies to everlasting prosperity, suddenly became seriously doubtful in view of the New York stockmarket collapse in 1929 and subsequent worldwide depression, whereas the socialist regime, which wasborn by the Russian Revolution in 1917, seemed to have circumvented its initial vulnerability and beganto grow into the sustainable alternative to the capitalist regime. The controversy was not about thede facto workability of these rival regimes; it was about the rational workability of these rival regimes.The salient players of this controversy were Oscar Lange and Friedrich Hayek, and the crucial point ofcontroversy could be succinctly summarized as follows: Can there be an economic regime that exhibits asatisfactory performance with respect to the list of performance characteristics such as (1) the efficiencyof outcomes thereby generated, (2) the compatibility with the respect for a democratic procedure ofdecision-making and that for individual liberty, and (3) the efficiency in the use of private informationfor the sake of seeking public objectives? If the answer to this fundamental question is in the affirmative,a further question naturally suggests itself: Can the capitalist regime and/or the socialist regime qualifyas an eligible economic regime? In my view, the Economic Planning Controversy in the 1930s alreadyidentified many questions to be pursued by welfare economics and social choice theory even though in acrude and informal way.4,5 It was this recognition that pushed me towards the study of welfare economicsand social choice theory, where the economic regimes are treated, not as historically given constants, butas variables to be designed and implemented.

The other background of my initial interest in welfare economics and social choice theory is firmlyrooted in my personal desires in life. Let me explain. Immediately after World War II, the OccupationAuthorities adopted many measures in pursuit of the economic democratization of Japan. Among thenotable examples of these measures were the Land Reform, which focused on the creation of many ownerfarmers by facilitating the transfer of farm lands from the absentee landlords to the tenant farmers, theDissolution of the Zaibatsu,6 and the transplantation from the United States to the Japanese soil of thefirst ever Anti-Monopoly Law. It is true that these so-called Postwar Economic Reforms had a greatimpact on the society and economy of Japan, but there were deeply seeded morals and conventions thatremained almost intact at least until the mid-1960s. I was the only son of a family that was runninga small-scale ceramic production/wholesale business. That almost inevitably implied that there was noother way for me than to succeed my father’s business and stay in the small hometown throughout my life.Even the choice of higher education was strictly geared towards the usefulness of the study for my future

3The Far Eastern Meeting of the Econometric Society in the 1960s was started by Michio Morishima, but it was soondiscontinued. After a long and big sleep, it resurged in 1987. It was Suzumura who played a crucial role in its revival. SeeSuzumura (1999a) for the history of the Far Eastern Meeting of the Econometric Society.

4Observe that Suzumura’s Introduction to Arrow, Sen, and Suzumura (2002) used the Economic Planning Controversyas the basic frame of reference in order to give a clear structure to the multifaceted developments of the theory of socialchoice.

5The basic reference to the Economic Planning Controversy is Hayek (1935).6A zaibatsu is a family-dominated financial combine that supposedly exerted strong controls over the Japanese economy

in the prewar period.

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activities as the helmsman of our family business. As a compromise, I chose Hitotsubashi University so asto study social sciences. Even then, I had to use some tricky arguments to persuade my father and securethis temporary port of refuge. I was keenly aware that the livelihoods of not only my family, but alsosome of my relatives depended on my personal decision, and I was bitterly reminded of the observationby Ralph W. Emerson: “We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made,and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.” You presumably understand that Ifelt greatly enlightened by the recognition that the study of welfare economics and social choice theorydefies the traditional view and treats institutions as variables to be designed and implemented.

WB & MF: At some point there seemed to be a danger that we may have lost you to a different careeraltogether — and we are very happy we didn’t, of course. You were a quite accomplished Kabuki actoronce, weren’t you?

KS: That is an extreme exaggeration. I certainly was not an accomplished Kabuki actor at all. Therewas a student club at Hitotsubashi University devoted to the study of this traditional performing art.Members of the club gathered together and studied the history, the scenario, and the performance ofthis magnificent art; we also paid frequent visits to the Kabuki Theater in East Ginza and watchedfascinating performances of great actors. Needless to say, we could only afford the cheapest possibleseats on the highest floor of the theater. If you study performing arts deeply enough in theory as wellas in action, you are naturally led to aspire for the active participation in a Kabuki play. At the time,it was not too difficult to get in touch with young and rising Kabuki actors and ask for their guidance.The more we learned and understood how to perform, the more ambitious we became to the extent ofaspiring to put our performance on the stage. We had chosen one scenario and I was assigned to playthe main character, viz., a young prince who was about to assume the office of shogun in the Kamakurashogunate, but he was destined to be assassinated. This bold attempt simply collapsed for two reasons.The first reason was that it soon became clear that we could not afford to rent gorgeous Kabuki costumes.The second reason was my height; I was simply too tall for a Kabuki actor. There were scenes in whichI had to ride on a horse, but the horse itself had to be played by two other actors, one for the front partof the horse and the other for the rear part. The rider was to sit on their joined arms but, in my case,my feet were still in contact with the ground, which would have turned a tragedy into a comedy. Thus,my career as a Kabuki actor ended before it actually got off the ground.

WB & MF: Let us now turn to your work on welfare economics and social choice theory. Your workon non-welfarist approaches to social choice has been extremely influential over the years. Would yousketch your position in the welfarism versus non-welfarism debate and the role of your contribution inthis area? Related to this, where do you stand with regard to the issue of consequentialism versus non-consequentialism?

KS: As Arrow has acutely observed, “[e]conomic or any other social policy has consequences for the manyand diverse individuals who make up the society or economy. It has been taken for granted in virtuallyall economic policy discussions since the time of Adam Smith, if not before, that alternative policiesshould be judged on the basis of their consequences for individuals [Arrow (1987, p.124)].” However,the convention of judging the goodness or badness of economic policies on the exclusive basis of theirconsequences for individuals seems to be open to criticism for at least three reasons.

In the first place, as Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, “[q]uite often good things havehurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed bytheir courage.” Likewise, Goethe told Johann Peter Eckermann that “[e]verything we do has a result.But that which is right and prudent does not always lead to good, nor the contrary to what is bad.”Mark Twain went as far as to claim that “[h]alf of the results of a good intention are evil; half of theresults of an evil intention are good.” Thus, the consequential outcomes of economic policies seem to fallconsiderably short of being the sole informational basis for judgements about the goodness or badnessof the economic policies in question.

In the second place, I had been keeping my naıve insight nourished during my high school daysto the effect that there are two aspects of collective decision-making, viz., the final outcome to whichit leads, and the procedure through which the final outcome is brought about. Depending on how weweigh one aspect against the other, we may well be led into contrasting judgements on the virtue of themethod of collective decision-making. Given this naıve insight of my own, the exclusive reliance on theconsequential outcomes of economic policies in complete neglect of their procedural and/or circumstantialcharacteristics seemed hard to swallow.

In the third place, I encountered an intriguing passage in Social Choice and Individual Values [Arrow

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(1963, pp.89-90)], which prevented me from accepting Arrow’s consequentialist informational basis with-out reservation: “Up to now, no attempt has been made to find guidance by considering the componentsof the vector which defines the social state. One especially interesting analysis of this sort considers that,among the variables which taken together define the social state, one is the very process by which thesociety makes its choice. This is especially important if the mechanism of choice itself has a value to theindividuals in the society.”

Thus, there seemed to be several reasons to explore the possibility of supplementing the conse-quentialist approach in welfare economics and social choice theory by bringing in non-consequentialistconsiderations such as the procedures of choice and the potential opportunities of choice. Making thebest use of Arrow’s insightful suggestion and following Sen’s pioneering attempts in the similar spirit,my own work in this arena focused on the contrast between consequentialism and non-consequentialismin general, and the axiomatic characterization of these sharply contrasting approaches in particular incollaboration with Yongsheng Xu [Suzumura (1999, 2000); Suzumura and Xu (2001, 2003, 2004)].

WB & MF: What about the contrast between welfarism and non-welfarism?

KS: As a matter of fact, the main line of research in welfare economics and social choice theory ledto the further sophistication of the consequentialist informational basis. Instead of supplementing theconsequentialist informational basis by means of non-consequentialist considerations, the first point of de-parture was to ask how the consequences within the consequentialist approach should be captured. If weare ready to describe the consequences of an economic policy by means of the individual utilities or wel-fares thereby generated, we are moving towards the branch of welfarist-consequentialism, or welfarism forshort. If, on the other hand, we ask for additional information other than individual utilities or welfaresin the description of consequences, we are moving towards the branch of non-welfarist-consequentialism,or non-welfarism for short. Most, if not all, work in social choice theory tended to elaborate on thewelfaristic basis by imposing an additional requirement of ordinal and interpersonally non-comparableutilities or welfares. It is true that this elaborated informational basis was the natural successor of theordinalist revolution of microeconomic theory in the 1930s, on the one hand, and the Robbinsian criti-cism [Robbins (1932)] of the Benthamite-Pigovian tradition of cardinal and interpersonally comparableindividual utilities, on the other. In my perception, Arrow succeeded this informational basis in SocialChoice and Individual Values and his General Impossibility Theorem for the sake of exposing the povertyof welfarism in this arena.

WB & MF: How did Sen influence you on the issue of welfarism versus non-welfarism?

KS: My interest in this issue began with the theory of individual libertarian rights, which was introducedinto social choice theory by Sen’s justly famous Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal.7,8 Sen introducedindividual libertarian rights as a vehicle by means of which he could expose the conflict between wel-farism in the weak form of the Pareto principle and non-welfarism in the form of the social respectfor individual libertarian rights. Given the predominance of the welfaristic approach within the “new”welfare economics and social choice theory, Sen’s liberal paradox to the effect that there is no socialdecision rule that makes the Pareto principle compatible with the social respect for individual libertarianrights caused a great stir in the profession. It was hard to deprive the Pareto principle of its sacrosanctstatus, whereas giving up the social respect for individual libertarian rights made me uneasy to say theleast. I should also add that Sen’s liberal paradox reminded me of an observation by Isaiah Berlin [Berlin(1958, pp.15 - 16)] to the effect that “the connexion between democracy and individual liberty is a gooddeal more tenuous than it seemed to many advocates of both. The desire to be governed by myself, orat any rate to participate in the process by which my life is to be controlled, may be as deep a wish asthat of a free area for action, and perhaps historically older. But it is not a desire for the same thing.So different is it, indeed, as to have led in the end to the great clash of ideologies that dominates ourworld.” I owe my interest in the issue of welfarism versus non-welfarism to Sen to the deepest extent.

7See Sen (1970; 1970a, Chapter 6∗; 1992).8When Arrow first presented his General Impossibility Theorem in the Cleveland Meeting of the Econometric Society

held in 1949, there was a contentious Canadian political economist among the audience by the name of David McCordWright. He harshly criticized Arrow and his theorem, because Arrow did not include the respect for individual libertyamong the axioms to be satisfied by the Arrow social welfare function. When Suzumura read this episode in Jerry Kelly’s(1987) “An Interview with Kenneth Arrow,” he asked Arrow what was his spontaneous response to Wright’s criticism.Although Arrow didn’t remember his initial response, he could have answered Wright’s criticism simply by saying: “Giveme your definition of individual liberty in the form of an axiom, then the augmented set of axioms would be all the moreinconsistent.” Nevertheless, the fact is that nobody actually tried to formulate the concept of individual liberty until Sen’spaper [Sen (1970)] was published in the Journal of Political Economy more than 20 years later.

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A disclaimer on the issue of welfarism versus non-welfarism and that of consequentialism versus non-consequentialism may be in order. To begin with, although the exclusive reliance on welfare informationmay well be held responsible for the poverty of normative evaluations, it should not be construed tomean that we should replace the welfaristic informational basis with the non-welfaristic alternativealtogether. What it means is that the welfaristic basis should be duly complemented by non-welfaristicinformation so as to arrive at the proper basis for normative evaluations. Likewise, the role to be playedby the non-consequentialist informational basis is not to replace, but to complement the consequentialistinformational basis. This is my stance in the issue of welfarism versus non-welfarism as well as in theissue of consequentialism versus non-consequentialism.

WB & MF: You have mentioned rights as an important topic that got you interested in non-welfarism.Issues such as rights, liberty, freedom of choice and external social norms or external norms in generalhave been proposed as ingredients that should be added to the more traditional framework of welfareeconomics and social choice theory. Do you think that large portions of the established framework shouldbe revised in consideration of recent criticisms, for example by Amartya Sen (1993), regarding the internalconsistency of choice?

KS: I believe the proper attitude we should take is to complement the traditional approach by accom-modating the non-traditional observations rather than to replace this approach with the deontologicalapproach. Indeed, some of my own work in this arena is an attempt to verify the real need for revisingthe traditional approach in view of the proposed criticisms. If we revise and/or expand the traditionalapproach appropriately, we may be able to combine seemingly conflicting considerations into the ex-tended approach, thereby enriching the reach of the traditional approach. I would like to be careful notto jump from the standard approach to the non-standard approach too casually. In this sense, I am infull accordance with John Hicks [Hicks (1981, pp.139-140)] who declared that “I have accordingly nointention, in abandoning Economic Welfarism, of falling into the ‘fiat libertas, ruat caelum’ which somelatter-day liberals seem to see as the only alternative. What I do maintain is that the liberal goods aregoods; that they are values which, however, must be weighed up against other values. The freedom andjustice that are possible of attainment are not the same in all societies, at all times, and in all places;they are themselves conditioned by external environment, and (in the short period at least) by what hasoccurred in the past. Yet we can recognise these limitations, and still feel that these ends are worthierends than those which are represented in a production index. It is better to think of economic activityas means to these ends, than as means to different ends, which are entirely its own.”

Personally, I would like to accommodate such factors as procedures for making the social choice,opportunities that lie behind the final social choice, and similar non-standard considerations. In sodoing, I would like to resist the temptation to pretend that such an accommodation exercise can beconducted by simply expanding the concept of social states. To illustrate my point, consider how weshould accommodate the procedural aspect of social choice into the consequentialist framework of socialchoice theory. Following Arrow’s suggestion, we may want to expand the description of social states, sayx, y in the universal set X of narrowly defined social states, by defining the pair (x, η)[resp. (y, θ)] meansthat the narrowly defined social state x [resp. y] is brought about through the mediation of the socialchoice procedure η [resp. θ]. This can surely be done, but there is no guarantee that the traditionalapproach can be applied to this expanded conceptual framework. To bring this simple point home, letus describe the social choice procedure in terms of the game form η = (N ;Σ = {Σ1, Σ2, . . . ,Σn}; g),where N = {1, 2, . . . , n} denotes the set of all players, Σi is the set of strategies of the player i ∈ N ,and g is the outcome function that maps each and every profile of individual strategies into a narrowlydefined social state. Let S ⊆ X be the opportunity set of narrowly defined social states. A narrowlydefined social stat xis feasible if and only if we are assured that x belongs to S, whereas an extendedsocial state (x, η) is feasible if and only if we are assured that x ∈ g(ε(η, R)) holds true, where ε is theequilibrium concept that prevails in the society, and R = (R1, R2, . . . , Rn) is the profile of individualpreference orderings on the set X of narrowly defined social states. Thus, just to verify the feasibility ofextended social states, we should be provided with the equilibrium concept E prevailing in the societyand the profile R of individual preference orderings on the set Xof narrowly defined social states. Asharp contrast between the theory based on the conventionally defined social states and that based onthe expanded social states is too conspicuous to be overlooked.

WB & MF: Rights have clearly played a major role throughout your career, and your 1992 Economicapaper [Gaertner, Pattanaik, and Suzumura (1992)] had a strong influence on the debates surroundingthis subject. Some of our colleagues say that your paper has awakened them from their dogmatic slumber,so it was really a landmark paper. Would you tell us more about how you became interested in this issue,

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how you would summarize the evolution of the debate on rights within social choice theory, and whereyou see this debate going in the future?

KS: When I first encountered the Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal (IPL), I was strongly impressedby the simple structure Sen used in exposing the logical conflict between the value of democracy inthe weak form of the Pareto principle and the value of liberty in the straightforward form of the socialrespect for individual libertarian rights. On reflection, Arrow’s general impossibility theorem seemedto hinge squarely on the requirement of collective rationality and the requirement of informationalefficiency, viz., the independence of irrelevant alternatives, both of which are controversial and harshlydebated in the literature. In sharp contrast, Sen’s IPL does not require both these controversial axioms.As far as we accept Sen’s formulation of individual libertarian rights, the IPL seems to have posed agenuine paradox. My early work on the issue of libertarian rights accepted Sen’s formulation of rightsin terms of the preference-contingent power of individuals to impose the rights-based constraints on thefinal social choice, and tried to identify a general method of resolving the IPL. One of the proposedresolution schemes, which was christened the Sen-Suzumura resolution scheme by David Austen-Smith[Austen-Smith (1982)], capitalizes on the concept of a liberal individual introduced by Sen [Sen (1976)].According to Suzumura (2011, p.630), “an individual is liberal if and only if he claims only those partsof his preferences, which are compatible with others’ preferences over their respective protected spheres,to be counted in social choice.” As Sen (1976) and Suzumura (1978) have shown, there exists a rationalsocial choice procedure, under which the Pareto principle and the social respect for individual libertarianrights in the sense of Sen are logically compatible, if only there exists at least one liberal individual inthe society.

I found this possibility theorem particularly satisfactory, as it provided me with an arena where mywork on the logical structure of binary relations played an essential role. However, my satisfaction wasshort-lived, as I soon became rather skeptical about Sen’s formulation of individual libertarian rights.Jointly with Wulf Gaertner and Prasanta Pattanaik, I found many instances in which Sen’s formulationturned out to be contrary to our intuitive conception of the freedom of choice. Further examination ledus to the alternative formulation of individual rights, which is game-theoretic in nature and seems tobe better suited to capture the essence of the classical idea of the freedom of choice. Our investigationculminated into a three-author joint article [Gaertner, Pattanaik and Suzumura (1992)] which capturesmy up-to-date understanding of the concept of individual libertarian rights. In trying to crystallize thisalternative approach to individual rights in terms of game forms, we were under strong influence oftrailblazers, most notably Robert Nozick (1974) and Robert Sugden (1985).

In order to avoid possible misunderstandings, two caveats may be in order at this juncture. In thefirst place, our so-called game-form approach is meant to provide an alternative formulation of rights,but there is no claim that this alternative approach is effective in dissipating Sen’s IPL altogether. Quiteto the contrary, there are many instances where the claim of game-form rights may conflict with thePareto principle. It is for this reason that we made it clear that our basic concern is the formulation ofthe notion of individual rights per se, and not the conflict between the requirement of individual rightsand that of the weak welfaristic requirement of Pareto optimality. It is our firm belief that the IPLpersists under virtually every plausible concept of individual rights that we can think of. In the secondplace, the notion of game forms per se has very little to do with rights. Our claim is that the best wayto capture individual rights is by means of game forms, and that there are numerous game forms havingno relevance to the question of rights at all.

WB & MF: Any thoughts on Gibbard’s paradox and its significance that you might want to add?

KS: Allan Gibbard [Gibbard (1974)] made three important contributions to the theory of libertarianrights by taking Sen’s formulation of rights for granted. In the first place, he identified what cameto be known as the Gibbard paradox to the effect that the conferment of the Sen rights to each andevery individual may result in a social preference cycle by itself. In contrast with Sens IPL, the Gibbardparadox has nothing to do with the welfaristic Pareto principle. It is easy to verify that this paradoxhinges squarely on the nature of individual preference orderings to the effect that Mr.A wants to matchthe color of his necktie with that of Ms.B’s neckerchief, whereas Ms.B abhors Mr.A’s mimicry andwould like to differentiate the color of her neckerchief from that of Mr.A’s necktie. The convincedlibertarian would not require that this pattern of others-oriented individual preference orderings besocially respected, which ushered Gibbard into the crucial concept of unconditional preferences. Hissecond contribution was to show that the IPL tenaciously comes back if we allow individuals to expressunconditional preferences only. In the third place, Gibbard (1974, p.397) invented the novel concept ofalienable libertarian rights, which might well be traced back to “a strong libertarian tradition of free

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contract,” according to which “a person’s rights are his to use or bargain away as he sees fit.” His greataccomplishment was to show that there exists a social choice rule that makes the Pareto principle and thealienable libertarian rights logically compatible. In my perception, Gibbard’s multifaceted contributionbrought the debates on the IPL to a higher stage by several steps. From the hindsight that the gameform approach to rights afforded us, however, the appeal of Gibbard’s contribution seems much less thanit seemed in those days. In particular, it is clear that Gibbard’s paradox is a mirage if we formulaterights as in the theory of game-form rights.

WB & MF: For more than three decades, you have made many path-breaking contributions to the theoryof rational choice, both at the individual and at the collective level. Where do you see this field movingin general? Do you personally have specific ongoing and future projects in this area?

KS: Rationality of choice is a subject that has been central in economics throughout its evolution.According to Andreu Mas-Colell (1982), Paul Samuelson once observed that, even after a hundred years,we would be talking economics in terms of such a concept as rational choice. Just like Samuelson,I am strongly convinced that rational choice is a concept that lies at the core of economic theory ingeneral, and welfare economics and social choice theory in particular. Having said this, I should hastento add that the concept of rational choice has always been controversial, and will remain so in the futuretoo. My own contributions in the theory of rational choice have focussed on the concept of rationalityas rationalizability, which can be traced to Lionel Robbins (1932, p.93): “[T]here is a sense in whichthe word rationality can be used which renders it legitimate to argue that at least some rationality isassumed before human behaviour has an economic aspect — the sense, namely, in which it is equivalentto ‘purposive’ . . . . . . . [T]o say this is not to say in the least that all purposive action is completelyconsistent.”

My own research started within revealed preference theory, which is a theory of rationalizability ofconsumer’s demand behaviour in perfectly competitive markets. Although the seminal contributionsin this arena by Paul Samuelson (1938, 1948, 1950) and Hendrik Houthakker (1950) fascinated me alot, the fact that it applies only to competitive consumers made me feel that it is still only a partialtheory. To bring the theory to its completion, we must go beyond competitive consumers and treatchoice functions defined on an arbitrary choice space. Two responses evolved in the literature. The firstresponse was due to Kenneth Arrow (1959) and Amartya Sen (1971), whereas the second response camefrom Marcel Richter (1966) and Bengt Hansson (1968). Arrow and Sen developed a theory of rationalityas rationalizability for a choice function whose domain contains the family of non-empty finite subsets ofan arbitrary universal set, whereas Richter and Hansson developed a theory for a choice function whosedomain consists of the family of non-empty arbitrary subsets of an arbitrary universal set. It was aboutthis time that I arrived in this field of research. Beginning with two papers, viz., “Rational Choice andRevealed Preference” [Suzumura (1976)] and “Houthakker’s Axiom in the Theory of Rational Choice”[Suzumura (1977)], I started my own research on the theory of rationality as rationalizability along thelines of the Richter-Hansson approach.

WB & MF: On the topic of the rationalizability of choices, one of your fundamental contributionsemerged in this context, but it has much more far-reaching implications. We have in mind your gener-alization of Szpilrajn’s (1930) seminal theorem on the extension of binary relations to orderings.9 Heproves that transitivity is a sufficient condition for the existence of an ordering extension, but your re-sult goes considerably further — you show that consistency in your sense is a necessary and sufficientcondition for the existence of such an extension. Would you briefly outline this remarkable result for usand tell us how you came to think about this issue? What do you see as possible alternative applicationsand uses of consistency?

KS: It was in the mid-1970s that I developed this concept of consistency while I was a visiting scholarat Cambridge University. I was then pursuing two distinct research projects. One project was on thetheory of revealed preference along the lines of Richter and Hansson, whereas the other project was onthe theory of libertarian rights along the lines of Sen. Quite unexpectedly, these two seemingly unrelatedprojects turned out to hinge crucially on the same concept, which I called consistency.10 The origin of

9Let R and R∗be two binary relations on the universal set X. R∗ is said to be an ordering extension of R if we have(i) R ⊆ R∗, (ii) P (R) ⊆ P (R∗) and (iii) R∗ is an ordering on X, where P (R) [resp. P (R∗)] is the asymmetric part of R[resp. R∗].

10There are many concepts of consistency in the literature. To avoid confusion, Walter Bossert (2008) coined a new termof Suzumura consistency for the consistency concept introduced by Suzumura (1976a). From this point onward, we willbe using this new nomenclature.

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this concept can be traced back to Houthakker’s (1950) axiom of semi-transitivity, on the one hand, andDavid Champernowne’s (1969) axiom of consistency, on the other.

Houthakker introduced his semi-transitivity axiom with the purpose of strengthening Samuelson’sweak axiom and establishing the rationalizability of a demand function by means of a preference ordering.Samuelson (1950) restated Houthakker’s axiom and formulated what he called the strong axiom ofrevealed preference. While I was working on the rationalizability theory along the lines of Richterand Hansson, I encountered an intriguing puzzle. Contrary to Samuelson’s scenario, there seemed toexist a grave cleavage between the choice functional counterpart of the semi-transitivity axiom and thechoice functional counterpart of the strong axiom, which seemed to disappear for single-valued choicefunctions. Samuelson’s identification of Houthakker’s semi-transitivity axiom and his strong axiomwas valid in the context of their revealed preference theory for single-valued demand functions. Forgeneral choice functions, however, the choice functional counterpart of the semi-transitivity axiom andthe choice functional counterpart of the strong axiom are distinct axioms altogether, the former beinglogically stronger than the latter. Suzumura (1977) showed that a general multi-valued choice functionis rationalizable by means of an ordering if and only if it satisfies Houthakker’s semi-transitivity axiomformulated by myself.

Champernowne (1969, Chapter 2) introduced a novel concept of consistency, which may be calledChampernowne consistency, of preference or probability relations. Let X be the universal set of alter-natives and R be a binary relation on X. A t-tuple of alternatives (x1, x2, . . . , xt) in X is a C-cycle oforder t if and only if

(x1, x2) ∈ P (R) ∪ N(R), (xτ , xτ+1) ∈ R (τ = 2, 3, . . . , t − 1) & (xt, x1) ∈ R

where (x, y) ∈ N(R) holds if and only if (x, y) /∈ R and (y, x) /∈ R hold. R is Champernowne-consistentif and only if there exists no C-cycle of any finite order. This concept seemed persuasive, but I foundan intriguing puzzle in this arena too. As soon as I encountered this interesting consistency concept, Iproved that a binary relation R is Champernowne-consistent if and only if it is transitive. It did nottake long before I formulated a new concept of consistency, viz., Suzumura-consistency A t-tuple ofalternatives (x1, x2, . . . , xt) in X is an S-cycle of order t if and only if

(x1, x2) ∈ P (R), (xτ , xτ+1) ∈ R (τ = 2, 3, . . . , t − 1) & (xt, x1) ∈ R

holds true. R is Suzumura-consistent if and only if there exists no S-cycle of any finite order. Inview of the unfortunate fate of Champernowne-consistency, I had every reason to be cautious about theproperties of Suzumura-consistent binary relations. It turned out that: (i) As in the case of Sen’s (1969)concept of quasi-transitivity, Suzumura-consistency lies strictly in between transitivity and acyclicity inlogical strength; (ii) The discrepancy between transitivity and Suzumura-consistency disappears if R iscomplete; (iii) A binary relation R has an ordering extension R∗ if and only if R is Suzumura-consistent.Needless to say, property (iii) is nothing other than the generalization of Szpilrajn’s theorem, which youhave already mentioned.

It turns out that my ordering extension theorem is of crucial importance in many distinct contexts.To begin with, my proof that a choice function C is rationalizable by means of a preference orderingif and only if C satisfies Houthakker’s axiom depends heavily on the logic of Suzumura-consistency. Inthe context of the Pareto libertarian paradox, I generalized Sen’s concept of a liberal individual thatplayed the role of switching the impossibility theorem into a possibility theorem. In this context aswell, it was my ordering extension theorem that proved of essential usefulness in the formulation ofa liberal individual. I should also mention the recent concept of the Suzumura-consistent closure ofa binary relation introduced by Bossert, Sprumont and Suzumura (2005). The Suzumura-consistentclosure sc(R) of a binary relation R is the smallest Suzumura-consistent superset of R. It is this conceptthat enabled us to characterize the novel concept of Suzumura-consistent rationalizability of a generalchoice function.

I believe that the concept of Suzumura-consistency and the generalized ordering extension theoremwill play an essential role in many other fields of individual and social choice including, among others,choice under uncertainty.

WB & MF: In the early eighties you managed to establish a link between concepts emanating from thetheory of fairness, in particular no-envy, and the formal apparatus of social choice theory. How do youview the relation between the various subfields of normative economics such as social choice theory, thetheory of fair allocation, welfare economics, inequality and poverty measurement, cost-benefit analysis,and so on? Should we aim at integrating these domains into a unified theory, or should we insteaddevelop specialized subfields independently?

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KS: There was a strong tendency among the advocates of fairness as no-envy approach such as SergeKolm (1972) and Hal Varian (1974, 1975) to emphasize the sharp cleavage between Arrow’s social choicetheory and their own approach to the extent of losing sight of the possible complementarities betweenthem. One clear instance is the statement by Varian (1975): “[S]ocial decision theory asks for too muchout of the [preference aggregation] process in that it asks for an entire ordering of the various socialstates. . . . The original question asked only for a good allocation; there was no requirement to rank allallocations. The fairness criterion in fact limits itself to answering the original question. It is limitedin that it gives no indication of the merits of two non-fair allocations, but by restricting itself in thisway it allows for a reasonable solution to the original problem.” Likewise, Kolm (1996) claimed that“the assumption of a social ordering, as well as the other weaker or alternative assumptions . . . areat odds with standard conceptions of equity and justice, and with consequences of rationality in thenormal sense of ‘for a reason’ . . . . . . . Why would we want to know the 193th best alternative? Onlythe first best is required for the choice.” To put the Arrow social choice theory on the same stage as theKolm-Varian fairness theory, I invoked the extended sympathy approach suggested by Patrick Suppes(1966) and formalized by Amartya Sen (1970a, Chapter 9∗).11 I showed in Suzumura (1981) that (i)the logical conflict between no-envy fairness and Pareto efficiency surfaces simply and transparently, and(ii) there exists no generalized social choice rule that satisfies the axiom of fairness extension (FE) andthe superset axiom of choice consistency (SUA).12 This result is important, as it shows unambiguouslythat there exists no Arrovian social choice rule that is compatible with no-envy fairness even underthe choice-consistency condition that is much weaker than Arrow’s axiom of collective rationality. Thisexercise seems to suggest that there are cases where various subfields of normative economics could beintegrated within an extended conceptual framework. However, the area of normative economics is soslippery that we should be careful enough in judging about the pros and cons of this research program.

It is true that the great merit of the axiomatic approach is to enable us to accommodate apparentlyseparate branches into a single axiomatic framework, thereby facilitating crystal-clear and comprehensiveanalyses with a broader perspective. However, in the process of combining various branches into a singleframework of axiomatic analysis, there is a clear danger of falling into the Procrustean trap: We may chipoff some rich idiosyncratic features of the branches in question for the sake of making them subsumableinto the uniform framework. Another danger is that, after the original branch is laid down on theProcrustean bed, it is all too easy to forget about bringing the results of the axiomatic analysis back tothe original context. It is in full awareness of these potential dangers that I am not eager to pursue apremature synthesis of various branches into a single axiomatic framework.

WB & MF: Your work displays a broad and sustained interest for the conceptual debates about thefoundations of welfare analysis, with some predilection for the critical approaches. In your view, howshould one think of the interaction between economics and philosophy in this respect? Do you have afavourite theory of social justice?

KS: Concerning your first question, a passage of Georg W. F. Hegel spontaneously comes to my mind:“A further word on the subject of issuing instructions on how the world ought to be: philosophy, atany rate, always comes too late to perform this function. As the thought of the world, it appears onlyat a time when actuality has gone through its formative process and attained its completed state. Thislesson of the concept is necessarily also apparent from history, namely that it is only when actuality hasreached maturity that the ideal appears opposite the real and reconstructs this real world, which it hasgrasped in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its grey in grey,a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey ofphilosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk [Hegel (1991, p.23)].”

In my perception, normative economics, which subsumes social choice theory and welfare economics,has two intellectual origins.13 The first origin, from which social choice theory was born, may beattributed to the pioneering work of Marie-Jean de Condorcet and Jean-Charles de Borda. Condorcetaddressed the mathematical discipline of collective decision-making by means of his analysis of simple

11The extended sympathy approach will be discussed further in the context of interpersonal comparisons of well-being.12The axiom (FE) requires that the social choice set C(S) should coincide with the fair set F (S), which is defined by the

intersection of the Pareto efficient set Ef (S) and the no-envy set Eq(S), whenever S is such that F (S) is non-empty. Theaxiom (SUA) is a weak choice-consistency condition to the effect that [S1 ⊆ S2 & C(S2) ⊆ C(S1)] implies C(S1) = C(S2),which is much weaker than Arrow’s collective rationality condition.

13According to Suzumura’s “Introduction” to Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Vol.1 [Arrow, Sen, and Suzumura,eds. (2002, pp.1-32)], “[s]ocial choice theory is concerned with the evaluation of alternative methods of collective decision-making, as well as with the logical foundations of welfare economics. In turn, welfare economics is concerned with thecritical scrutiny of the performance of actual and/or imaginary economic systems, as well as with the critique, design andimplementation of alternative economic policies.”

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majority voting and related procedures. It was Condorcet who identified the first major paradox in socialchoice theory, which became widely known under the title of the Condorcet paradox. His contributionseems to have been inspired by an earlier work by Borda, who proposed to the French Academy ofScience the rank-order method of decision-making. Two conspicuous features of this phase of socialchoice theory may deserve emphasis. On the one hand, the informational basis of the methods proposedby Condorcet and Borda is unambiguously welfarist with ordinal and interpersonally non-comparableutilities. On the other hand, the philosophical background of their work can be traced to the intellectualatmosphere of the European Enlightenment with its conspicuous concern about human rights and thereasoned design and implementation of the method of collective decision-making. The second origin ofnormative economics, from which welfare economics was born, can be attributed to Jeremy Bentham,who was a stark critic of the concept of inviolable natural rights. It was in the context of his harshcriticism on the French “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” which was embodied inthe French Constitution of 1791, that Bentham wrote the following famous passage: “[N]atural rightsis simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, — nonsense upon stilts[Bentham (1789, 1843)].” Bentham was a legal philosopher who took recourse to the greatest happinessprinciple to the effect that the ultimate criterion for judging the goodness of an economic system and/oreconomic policy is that they bring about the “greatest happiness of the greatest number.” This utilitariancriterion of judgment about economic systems and/or economic policies permeated through the work ofJohn Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, Francis Edgeworth, and Henry Sidgwick, which served as a naturalbasis for the synthesis of the long philosophical tradition in England by the hands of Arthur Pigou (1920)in the early twentieth century. Needless to say, the informational basis of this Benthamite tradition isunambiguously welfarist with cardinal and interpersonally unit-comparable utilities.

Thus, the two origins of normative economics are closely related to the philosophical atmosphere ofthe European Enlightenment, on the one hand, and the English tradition of utilitarianism, on the other.The interface between normative economics and philosophy is indeed deep and wide, and I believe thatthis interface will prove crucial in the future as well. Amartya Sen has contributed more than anybodyelse to make us aware of the importance of this interface.

Before answering your second question, let me explain my stance towards various theories of justice.Even if I am a devotee of the theory A of justice as a matter of my personal conviction, this fact doesnot enable me as a scholar of normative economics to neglect the other theory B of justice altogether ifI am not ready to be paternalistic in my normative analysis. As a social scientist, I should explore thelogical coherence of the theory B as well as the implications thereof in various contexts of the designand/or implementation of economic policies and economic systems.

After bringing this point home, however, I have no reason to hide my struggle over many years inthe narrowly confined space between the procedural theories of justice and the consequentialist theoriesof justice. I am unable to become a devout believer in the consequentialist theory of justice pure andsimple, forgetting about the legitimacy of the decision-making procedure through which the consequencesare brought about. However, I am also unable to be so dogmatic as to neglect the consequences of aneconomic policy and/or an economic system altogether, and stick to the deontological principle of justicepure and simple. In this context, it is hard for me to resist the temptation to cite a nice passage fromAmartya Sen (1970a, p.200): “[W]hile ‘pure’ systems of collective choice tend to be more appealing fortheoretical studies of social decisions, they are often not the most useful systems to study. . . . Both fromthe point of view of institutions as well as that of frameworks of thought, the impure systems wouldappear to be relevant. . . . [W]hile purity is an uncomplicated virtue for olive oil, sea air, and heroines offolk tales, it is not so for systems of collective choice.” I have been struggling to find a way to strike abalance between two principles of justice, viz. the procedural principle of justice and the consequentialistprinciple of justice.

WB & MF: Would you explain in some more detail how you see the role of the social choice theorist inthe debates about social justice? Maybe you also might want to share a few more details regarding yourpersonal theory of justice, even though you don’t make use of it directly in your theoretical work.

KS: Let us illustrate my own stance on the role of social choice theorists in this arena. Suppose that Iam provided with two principles of justice from outside, say ωA and ωB . In my view, the due task of thesocial choice theorist seems to be three-fold. In the first place, it is his task to squeeze out their crucialimplications in the critical contexts as a test of their logical coherence and intuitive reasonableness. Ifone or the other of these principles exposes a disagreeable implication in one of the test fields, his taskas a scientist is to advise people to think twice about their blind devotion to such a repugnant principleof justice. Suppose that both ωA and ωBdo not reveal any repugnant implication in this test. It is hisfurther task to find a set of characterizing axioms for each one of these principles of justice. This is for

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the sake of making the contrast between the rival principles of justice crystal-clear, and assisting thedevotees of the rival principles of justice to be aware of the logical foundations of their ethical beliefs.An important further task of social choice theorists is to see if each principle of justice does not createa logical conflict with other basic principles such as the principle of efficiency. Suppose that the rivalprinciples of justice successfully pass this hurdle. In my perception, the social choice theorist is still leftwith the third task, which is to find a method of combining the rival principles of justice and clarifythe logical performance of the compound principle. There are two methods of juxtaposition, viz., theset-theoretic union and the set-theoretic intersection, and there are also two methods of lexicographiccombination, viz., ωA and ωBsecond, or the other way round. I myself tried to work out the logicalperformance of the lexicographic combinations in Suzumura (1983a). The methods of lexicographiccombination were further explored by Koichi Tadenuma (2002).

You also asked to further clarify my personal theory of justice. As I said already, I have always beenstruggling to find a way to strike a balance between two principles of justice, viz., procedural justiceand consequentialist justice. It was through my study on the rule-oriented approach to the theoryof fair measures and practices of trade among member countries within the GATT/WTO regime, aswell as on the design and implementation of the competition law and policy that I reached my currentunderstanding on how to combine these two principles of justice. Let me explain this scenario in theconcrete context of competition law and policy.

Suppose that a competitive game is played under the prevailing competition law, which is supposedto implement the ex ante notion of justice. When the dust of competition is off, a competitor, to whomthe result of the game turned out to be unfavorable, may cry against the injustice of the competitiveoutcome. I am unwilling to respond hastily to this cry and revise the ex ante just rule of the game.However, I am also unwilling to reject the discontent player’s plea just because he agreed to participatein the competitive game in awareness that it implements theex ante just rule of the game.

This leads me to the three-stage examination of the justice of the ex ante rule of the game. In thefirst stage, the defeat of the discontent player may be due to his own mistake in choosing his competitivestrategy. In this case, there seems to be no reason to revise the ex ante rule of the game even if we havefull sympathy with the plight of the discontent player. In the second stage, his defeat may be due to theunlawful competitive acts of the rival players. In this case, I believe that the just verdict is to invoke theex ante just rule of the game to the maximum extent and penalize the unjust acts of the rival players.In this case as well, I believe there is no reason to revise the ex ante just rule of the game. In the thirdand last stage, the defeat of the discontent player may be due to the fact that the ex ante just rule of thegame in fact contains some flaws that were overlooked in the stage of designing and implementing the exante just rule of the game. In this case, the ex ante just rule of the game, which is revealed to containsome ex post injustice, is in need for revision so as to re-design an ex ante just competitive game. Inthis case, the protest by the discontent player has a clear role of sending a signal that the ex ante justrule of the game should be revised in view of the ex post exposure of its flawed performance. This isan illustration of my current compounding of the consequentialist theory of justice and the proceduraltheory of justice.

WB & MF: For many years, interpersonal comparisons of well-being were viewed with scepticism but itseems that attitudes have become more accepting with respect to this issue in recent years. What is yourposition on interpersonal comparisons and their use in social choice theory and welfare economics?

KS: There are two issues I would like to discuss in this context. The first issue is: What do we meanby interpersonal comparisons of well-being? The second issue is: Interpersonal comparisons of what?

To explain my stance on the first issue, consider the extended sympathy approach along the lines ofSuppes (1966), Arrow (1963) and Sen (1970a, Chapter 9∗). Let x and y be two conventionally definedsocial alternatives, and i, j and k be three individuals in the society. The pair (x, i) denotes the situationof being in the position of individual i when the social alternative x prevails. Suppose that the individuali prefers (x, i) to (y, i), viz., i prefers x to y, keeping his own personal identity whichever alternativein {x, y} prevails in the society. Suppose now the preference of i over the pairs (x, j) and (y, k) is suchthat he prefers (x, j) to (y, k), viz., i prefers being in the position of j when x prevails to being in theposition of k when y prevails. This is still not an interpersonal comparison, but an intrapersonal andintersituational comparison. This approach allows the situation where i prefers (x, i) to (y, i), and jprefers (y, i) to (x, i), viz., j has no sympathy to i′s preference for x against y. Sen introduced his axiomof identity in the sense that j′s preference over the set of extended alternatives {(x, i), (y, i)} should bein full concordance with i′s preference over the same set of extended alternatives {(x, i), (y, i)}. This is asensible axiom to impose on intersituational comparisons, but a problem still remains. By the impositionof the axiom of identity, what started as intrapersonal and intersituational comparisons are turned into

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interpersonal comparisons. I am willing to accept this type of interpersonal comparisons. Indeed, I havemade use of this conceptual framework in Suzumura (1978, 1981, 1983/2009, Chapter 6∗, Chapter 9∗,1983a), where I tried to apply this framework to the problem of individual libertarian rights and alsoto the social-choice theoretic analysis of the fairness-as-no-envy concept. There are other approaches tointerpersonal comparisons of utilities pursued in the literature, but I am not ready to accept, let aloneendorse, these alternative approaches.

Let me turn to the second issue. When social choice theorists refer to the possibility of interpersonalcomparisons, most if not literally all references are to interpersonal comparisons of utilities or welfares.However, there are contexts where the welfaristic informational basis can hardly support a meaningfulanalysis of the issue at stake. This is particularly so in the case of intergenerational welfare economics.Recollect a well-known passage from Henry Sidgwick (1874, p.414): “[I]t may be asked, How far we areto consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with those of existing human beings?It seems . . . clear that the time at which a man exists cannot affect the value of his happiness from auniversal point of view; and that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as those ofhis contemporaries.” The principle of equitable treatment of the present generation vis-a-vis the futuregenerations, which is christened the Sidgwick equity principle, occupies a special niche in the literature onintergenerational justice. However, there is a serious problem. The generational utility stream up untilthe present is uniquely determined along the historical path, whereas the future evolution of human well-beings cannot but be malleable in response to what choices the successive generations will make. Thismeans that there is no way of knowing at present which path of the generational utility will materializein the future. In view of this non-identity problem pointed out by Derek Parfit (1984), the problem of“intergenerational comparisons of what” cannot but surface in the context of intergenerational justice.Thus, the non-welfaristic informational basis such as the “primary social goods” a la John Rawls (1971)and the “functionings and capabilities” a la Amartya Sen (1985) becomes all the more relevant in thecontext of intergenerational justice.

WB & MF: There is a recent development of studies that have to do with people’s attitudes towardssatisfaction and happiness in their lives. What is your view on this development? How should we, socialchoice theorists, incorporate these developments in our theories and in our framework?

KS: Normative economics is a slippery area and even a small step is valuable as long as it leads to a solidprogress of our science. The so-called happiness studies are so much in vogue that it is all too natural toexpect that the progress thereby made will lead to a resolution of many enigmas that are left unsettled bytraditional approaches in normative economics. I am not well acquainted with the recent development ofhappiness studies, but I do wish them well in their pursuit for “instruments for the bettering of human life[Pigou (1920)].” As far as I can see, there are two agendas that decent happiness studies cannot but faceup to: (i) to devise a method of calibration of individual human happiness; and (ii) to invent a methodof amalgamating the calibrated human happiness indices into a social index for policy prescriptions.As far as the first agenda goes, my perception is that happiness studies already accomplished manycontributions in close collaboration with the information and experience of experimental psychology andbehavioral economics. However, more often than not, the happiness calibration is by means of locatinghuman happiness on the closed unit interval [0, 1], where 0 and 1 stand for the happiness in the “worst”and the “best” states of the world, respectively. Even after doing this, there still remains a problem ofamalgamating individual happiness indices into a social index, where one cannot but face the conundrumof interpersonal comparisons all over again. I am unsure how the proponents of happiness studies copewith this second agenda, where many complications had to be faced by the practitioners of traditionalnormative economics. I sincerely wish them well.

WB & MF: In addition to your work in social choice theory and welfare economics, which all ourreaders are familiar with, you have made contributions in other seemingly unrelated areas of economics,including industrial organization and the economic analysis of competition policy and industrial policy.Did this work emerge as the outcome of separate and independent projects or are there links to your workin our area?

KS: Among my work on industrial organization, let me cite two papers, viz., Suzumura and Kiyono(1987) and Suzumura (1992), to exemplify the interface between my work in this arena, on the onehand, and in the arena of welfare economics and social choice theory, on the other. Both papers arefocused on the issue of welfare and competition, but by competition I do not mean an equilibrium conceptsuch as the perfectly competitive state, where all strategic moves among rival firms are exhausted, butthe process of competition through which rival firms struggle against each other in search for dominance

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in an existing market, or the acquisition of a new market.It was in the early 1980s that I became aware of the lack of solid analysis of the welfare effects of

competition in the process sense. I also recognized that there were two conventional beliefs persistentlyheld side by side in Japan. The first belief, which had strenuously permeated through governmentofficials in charge of industrial policy, a large portion of business representatives, and some ordinarycitizens including senior academic economists, was under the strong influence of the Confucian maxim tothe effect that “too much is as bad as too little.” As a symbol of this conventional wisdom, a very strangeexpression of “excessive competition” had been widely in vogue. The second conventional belief had beenheld by younger generations of academic economists indoctrinated into the standard economic theoryin the Western world. It embodies a belief in the role of competition as a decentralized mechanism forefficient allocation of resources. So strong was the contrast between these conventional beliefs that therewere little, if any, interactions between people in the policy and business circle, on the one hand, andyounger academic economists, on the other, concerning the welfare effects of competition. To constructa meaningful bridge between these conventional beliefs, my work started from what I christened theBaumol(1982, p.2) hypothesis to the effect that “the standard analysis [of industrial organization] leavesus with the impression that there is a rough continuum, in terms of desirability of industry performance,ranging from unregulated pure monopoly as the pessimal [sic] arrangement to perfect competition asthe ideal, with relative efficiency in resource allocation increasing monotonically as the number of firmsexpands.” To lend analytical substance to the Baumol hypothesis, a model of homogeneous oligopoly,where firms compete in terms of quantities, is used to define three crucial concepts. The first concept isthe equilibrium number of firms ne, where the equilibrium profits of Cournot competitors are exhaustedthrough the entry/exit dynamics among potential firms and incumbent firms. The second concept isthe first-best number of firms nf , which maximizes the first-best market surplus. The third concept isthe second-best number of firms ns, where the second-best market surplus is maximized. Under suitableassumptions, which are not at all farfetched, it was shown by Suzumura and Kiyono (1987) that ne

exceeds not only nf , but also ns. Thus, there is a sense, which is welfare-theoretic in nature, thatcompetition may be construed to be socially excessive. These propositions, to be called excess entrytheorems, are further generalized by Konishi, Okuno-Fujiwara and Suzumura (1990) in the presence ofgeneral equilibrium interactions among firms, and also by Okuno-Fujiwara and Suzumura (1993) in thepresence of strategic R&D commitment. In establishing these excess entry theorems, my purpose wasnot to provide a welfare-theoretic foundation for the first conventional belief, but to cast a reasoned andserious doubt on the welfaristic informational basis of normative economics. Indeed, the market surplusfunction in the case of partial equilibrium analysis, or the utility function of the representative consumerin the case of general equilibrium analysis, provides us with welfaristic information in full neglect ofsuch non-welfaristic information as the equitable and anonymous treatment of market participants, orthe role of competition as a discovery procedure in the sense of Friedrich Hayek. As I tried to expoundin Suzumura (1999), the main message of the excess entry theorems is the need for a non-welfaristicinformational basis of normative economics in the specific context of welfare and competition.

The second paper was also on welfare and competition, but the focal issue was the contrast betweencompetition and collaboration. Even if firms compete fiercely in the product market, there may wellbe reasons for them to collaborate prior to the commencement of the product market competition. Agood case in point is R&D investment with a feature of club goods, which may result in cost-reducinginnovation that is available for all firms that participate in the R&D association. To be consistent withthe competition law that stipulates that cartels are per se illegal, there should be a firm commitmentby all firms participating in the R&D association that they will compete in the product market alongwith outsider firms. Is the formation of such a R&D association welfare improving vis-a-vis competitionin the R&D market as well as in the product market? The purpose of Suzumura (1992) was to identifythe condition under which the R&D association may perform better than the competitive R&D commit-ment. This analysis was meant to clarify the balance between non-cooperative activities and cooperativeactivities in the two-stage game of commitment and competition. In this sense, it is a pilot study ofwelfare-theoretic analysis of competition and collaboration. I believe that the relevance of this work inthe research program of normative economics should be clear.

WB & MF: You mentioned your involvement in actual policy making and issues involving competition.Do you have the impression that policy makers are open to what we have to offer in terms of implementingthe results obtained in social choice theory?

KS: Let me answer your question by relating a bad experience and a good experience I encountered inJapan. The bad experience relates to a deliberation council on telecommunications reform, which tookplace in the mid-1980s. The government officials in charge of this deliberation council were so self-assured

15

that they started with the premise that sagacious regulations led by the top government officials willalways perform better than leaving things to spontaneous competition as much as possible. They werealso quite chauvinistic and unwilling to examine experiences accumulated in foreign countries, let aloneto learn a lesson from insightful regulatory reforms in the UK and the US. Indeed, the timing of thistelecommunications reform in Japan was in conformity with the introduction of the so-called incentiveregulation in the US. I was naıve enough to ask government officials what we could learn from the US ex-perience of incentive regulation and received no answer whatsoever. Indeed, they responded as if nothingcalled incentive regulation ever existed. Soon afterwards, my term of service in the telecommunicationsdeliberation council expired, which was never renewed. Thus, my first experience of being involved inthe government decision-making process was futile, fruitless and frustrating. Since the purpose of de-liberation councils is to design an economic policy or an economic mechanism for helping politicians tomake the official public decision, I must say that I had no chance to influence the government decision atall. I should also add that there was very little room for social choice theorists to apply their theoreticalresults to actual policy issues.

The good experience is that I was invited to lead the inauguration of the Competition Policy ResearchCenter (CPRC) within the Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC), which partly occupied my timeand energy from 2003 to 2008. The factual background of this invitation was the two joint researchprojects that I organized in the early 1980s on Japanese industrial policy and on Japanese competitionpolicy toward the end of the 1990s. The outcomes of these projects were subsequently published asIndustrial Policy of Japan [Komiya, Okuno and Suzumura (1988)] and Competition Policy of Japan[Goto and Suzumura (1999)], respectively. Before the inauguration of CPRC, JFTC was predominantlyan organization of legal experts with little, if any, systematic help from economic analysis. During mydirectorship over five years, I believe I had kicked off the tradition of economic analysis that mightprovide the information needed for legal decisions to be made by JFTC.

Although I found this experience intellectually pleasing, I should mention two important reservations.In the first place, the legal decisions by JFTC are within the exclusive jurisdiction of five commissioners,who are appointed by the national diet. This being the case, there is no channel through which CPRCcan exert direct influence on competition policy decisions. However, this does not exclude the possibilitythat CPRC exerts indirect influence on competition policy decisions through the provision of informationbased on economic analyses. In the second place, there is a possibility that CPRC may help the newdesign and implementation of the legal framework of competition policy. A good case in point is therevision of competition law in 2005. One of the focal issues of this revision was the introduction of aninstitutional device for improving the performance of the surcharge system, which was introduced in1977 in order to keep cartels and illegal agreements among competitive bidders under due control. Theoption actually proposed and implemented was the leniency scheme to the effect that those membersof the cartels and/or illegal agreements who submit the information about the anti-competitive acts inquestion to the competition policy authority would be exempted from a substantial portion of surchargethat would otherwise be imposed, thereby introducing strong incentives for the members of the anti-competitive acts to comply “voluntarily” with the competition policy initiatives. This scheme was inactual use in other parts of the world, which was transplanted into Japan in 2005. If there were no suchdevice ready for transplantation from outside, there would be a golden opportunity for CPRC to designand propose a novel mechanism for the competition policy authority to examine and implement. Inprinciple, therefore, there is a potential room for social choice theory to contribute to the institutionalreforms in actual policy contexts.

WB & MF: What advice would you give to your younger colleagues in that respect? Should they try toget more involved? What ways should they use to be more influential?

KS: I don’t think that there is a universally applicable advice in this arena. A sensible advice seems tobe contingent on the young scholar’s own view on the mission of social sciences. If one has the strongconviction that a social scientist should aspire to drafting his/her own prescription for bettering humanlives, it is advisable to know much about actual procedures for society-wide decision-making, and thinkabout how his/her scientific research can influence these procedures in actual use. Please don’t take mewrong. I am not saying that he/she should switch his/her life from sciences to politics or bureaucracies;I am saying that he/she should be vigilant enough and be ready to propose timely and through effectivechannels his/her prescription for bettering human lives. If he/she is willing to make frequent roundtripsbetween theory and practice in this sense, he/she will be richly remunerated by an abundant agenda forfar-sighted investigations. One should be warned that this route requires a lot of investment of one’stime as well as energy. I confess that I myself have sacrificed a lot of time and energy for my firmcommitment to the vistas opened up by Pigou and his intellectual descendants, but I have no reason to

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regret my deliberate choice.If, on the other hand, one is better suited for pursuing purely theoretical work in welfare economics

and social choice theory, I have nothing to say against such a pursuit. To concentrate on the basicresearch of purely theoretical nature is a choice that is open only for rare species among social scientists.I wish them well, and hope that their theoretical work will shed new light on our research agenda fornormative economics in the future.

WB & MF: This gives us a good idea about the position of our discipline in the outside world, butwhat about our position within economics, within the academic community? You have been involved bothin our Society and in our journal from the very beginning. What do you see as the challenges we aregoing to face as a group in the future? Would you say that it has become more difficult for social choicetheorists to be appreciated within the economics profession in general, and within economic theory inparticular? How do you view the attitude of economics journals toward contributions in social choicetheory? Do you perceive there to be a bias against our field?

KS: Let us remind ourselves of the monumental World Meeting on Social Choice Theory held in thesummer of 1980. Most of the active social choice theorists in those days gathered in Caen and talkedabout the inauguration of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare and the commencement of a newjournal to be called Social Choice and Welfare. I recollect that the first proposal did not cause anyserious objection, and the Society for Social Choice and Welfare made a start with the first president,Kenneth Arrow, who was unanimously elected by the founding members of the Society. It was on thesecond issue that the members had serious differences of opinion. As a background of this difference,there were strong hostilities on the part of academic journals towards social choice theory. Indeed, anannouncement was made in the top journal to the effect that the papers in social choice theory were inexcess supply and would be treated differently from the papers in other fields of research. I thought atthat time and I still think now that this editorial decision was wrong and unjust to the researches in thefield of social choice theory. Many founding members of the Society seem to have thought similarly, andmost of them argued that we should commence a journal of our own for the sake of securing a properoutlet of our research outcomes. The counterargument, which was expressed by some of the foundingmembers including myself, emphasized that the biased treatment of social choice theory should not betaken as a legitimate reason to start our specialized journal, as it would strengthen the reason to treatsocial choice theory unfavourably by enabling the editors to suggest to the authors to try the specializedjournal of their own rather than the mainstream journals that are under severe space limitations.

I am keenly aware that Social Choice and Welfare has made great contributions to the promotion ofour field of research, but I still retain my view at that time to some extent. It is my strong belief thatwe should not confine ourselves to a self-built sanctuary. I believe that most of the top researchers inour field of research are revealing their preference, which is largely in conformity with my view. It seemsto me that this is the sure-fire choice for social choice theorists to be appreciated within the economicsprofession in general, and within economic theory in particular.

WB & MF: What do you view as the major accomplishments in social choice theory and welfareeconomics in the recent past? Where do you see our field going?

KS: To prepare for my answer to your first question, let me briefly refer back to Jeremy Bentham andArthur Pigou. According to the standard understanding of the research program of Pigou’s “old” welfareeconomics, which is founded on the Benthamite utilitarianism, the major scenario of welfare economicsmay be captured as follows: Design an institutional framework of a society with n individuals, where2 ≤ n < +∞, so as to implement the solution xBP ∈ S to the following constrained maximizationprogram:

Max {u1(x) + u2(x) + · · · + un(x)} over all x ∈ S,(B-P)

where ui is the utility function of individual i ∈ N := {1, 2, . . . , n} and S is the set of feasible alter-natives.14 The research program of the social welfare function school of “new” welfare economics a laAbram Bergson and Paul Samuelson may be captured as follows: Design an institutional framework ofa society so as to implement the solution xBS ∈ S to the following constrained maximization program:

Max f(u1(x), u2(x), · · · , un(x)) over all x ∈ S,(B-S)

14B-P is the abbreviation of Bentham and Pigou.

17

where f denote denotes a Bergson-Samuelson social welfare function.15

Observe that both (B-P) and (B-S) capture the essence of mainstream welfare economics in theconstrained maximization paradigm. This simple fact helps us to identify two eminent developments inwelfare economics and social choice theory.

The first development I want to identify and evaluate is the theory of implementation due to LeonidHurwicz (1972, 2008) and Eric Maskin (1977/1999, 2008). The gist of this approach is to design agame form such that the set of equilibrium outcomes of the game coincides with the set of solutions tothe constrained maximization problem (B-S) for each and every profile of individual utility functionsand given the equilibrium concept prevailing in the society. It is worthwhile to recollect that Arrow(1951/1963, p.7) observed that “[e]ven in a case where it is possible to construct a procedure showinghow to aggregate individual tastes into a consistent social preference pattern, there still remains theproblem of devising rules of the game so that individuals will actually express their true tastes evenwhen they are acting rationally.” The Hurwicz-Maskin theory of implementation may be construed tobe an answer to the problem posed by Arrow. One may even dare to say that the Hurwicz-Maskintheory is the first formulation of the Benthamite program of social reform in the form of (B-S). Startingfrom the seminal contributions due to Hurwicz (1972, 2008) and Maskin (1977/1999, 2008), the theoryof implementation became the first major field of research in social choice theory since Arrow kickedoff the axiomatic study on the formation of a social objective through the democratic aggregation ofindividual preference orderings.

The second development I want to identify and evaluate is also related to the maximization problems(B-P) and (B-S), but the exact nature of this relationship is less direct and more critical than in thecase of the first development. It is also more philosophical in nature and may be thought to go squarelyagainst the standard scenario of normative economics. The point of departure is the identification of thetwo schools of thought within normative economics. The first school identifies the major task of welfareeconomics to be the design of an institutional framework of a society for the sake of implementing thesocially best consequences from the set of feasible alternatives. The second school originates in the“old” welfare economics a la Pigou. Instead of focusing on the implementation of the socially bestalternative as in the case of the first school, the second school aspires for the improvement of socialwelfare by designing the instrument for the bettering of human life. In my own perception, the contrastbetween these two schools of welfare economics can be traced back to Amartya Sen’s (2009) monumentaltreatise of a philosophical nature, which called our attention to the sharp contrast between transcendentalinstitutionalism and the comparative assessment approach. Much juice is to be extracted in this broadarena, and I am looking forward to the exploration of the avenue that was opened by Sen.16

Where do I see our field going? I am not in a position of predicting the future course of evolution.The best I can do is to express my personal desire for the future evolution of welfare economics and socialchoice theory. To begin with, I hope that much more effort will be devoted to the procedural aspects ofnormative economics, thereby enriching our understanding on the pros and cons of non-consequentialistapproaches. I also hope that there will be further explorations of intergenerational aspects of normativeeconomics. Beginning with the insightful observation by Sidgwick (1874), many scholars in normativeeconomics and moral philosophy have explored the logical consequences of treating different generationsequitably. Concerning the logical compatibility between the Sidgwickean equity principle and the Paretoefficiency principle, social choice theorists have elaborated the impossibility theorem by Peter Diamond(1965).17 It is also worthwhile to mention the intriguing concept of sustainable development, which wasintroduced in 1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources andacquired worldwide recognition by means of the Brundland Report [World Commission on Environmentand Development (1987)]. It is clear that this concept echoes the Sidgwickean equity principle, butthe exact analysis still awaits future exploration. Another good case in point is the problem of globalwarming, the proper analysis of which forces us to confront the non-identity problem due to Derek Parfit(1984). It is my strong desire that the concerted efforts by normative economists and philosophers willshed clear light on these crucial problems in the future.

WB & MF: You retired from Waseda University at the end of March 2014 after six years of teachingsocial choice theory and public philosophy. Your Valedictory Lecture was delivered under the title: “InSearch for Welfare Economics with Red Corpuscles.” Would you explain what you intended to convey toyour audience by choosing this rather unusual title?

15B-S is the abbreviation of Bergson and Samuelson.16This issue is discussed more in detail in Chapter 28 of Suzumura (forthcoming).17On some aspects of this development, see Roemer and Suzumura (2007). See also Bossert and Suzumura (2010, Chapter

10) for Suzumura’s own work in this arena.

18

KS: In his touching tribute to James Meade at his eightieth birthday, Robert Solow (1987, p.986)wrote as follows: “I suppose Meade’s effort could be described as fundamental welfare economics, butwelfare economics with red corpuscles, not the sort of attenuated theory that concludes that if onlyeverything were convex and everybody knew everything and there were perfect markets for all futurecontingent commodities, including contingencies for which no vocabulary now exists, then with costlesslump-sum transfers we could make all for the best in this best of imaginable worlds. Meade expectswelfare economics to provide advice, not resignation.” In my perception, this characterization of Meade’swork brings us all the way back to Pigou’s Preface to The Economics of Welfare. It was in search forthe resurgence of welfare economics in the spirit of Pigou and Meade that I borrowed this unorthodoxcircumlocution from Solow.

I am convinced that the best aspect of retirement is that one can exercise the full freedom of choiceto devote oneself to the research activities of one’s strongest concern. I am impatient to kick off my owngame of welfare economics with red corpuscles.

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